he 162 salamander

some time ago i saw a tv program about the german planes and in it they said that the salamander managed to shot down one plane at war's end, a typhoon, the only one downed by this little plane, it is posible to confirm this

*) while practicing training flights
**) entry in flightlog: "effectively shot" this leaves questions open
***) british sources rate it as loss due to jet fighter
Official confirmation procedure wasn´t possible in april and may 45, so we do have claims only. In depth research revealed that a lot more allied planes got lost in these regions but in most cases there are no circumstances known. The JG1 was declared operational in the last week of april 45 and continued for some fighter sweeps in May 45. Most of these have been unseccessful due to the lack of ground control and proper deployment tactics (they often missed the targets or were redirected) like disengage enemy fighter. As far as I know no claim so far has been confirmed independently

On the other side of the ledger, I can find one Allied claim for a He162, though there may well be more. On the 19th of April Flying Officer G. Walkington from 222 Sqn, in Tempest V SN185, made a low level claim for a He 162 around Husum, confirmed by other pilots in his flight.

Thanks for the info, J.!
Would be interesting to know about the records at 19th of april as well. Walkington probably got Kirchner down (according to guncam footage a low level flying single engined jet), according to german sources during landing attempt. He had no chance to use the ejection seat.
I also contributed the dates for A. Dickfeld and W. Batz (#7). For me it seems difficult to deal with Dickfeld, his book states it but it has so many wrong points...
Maybe someone can check it with the losses.
The may 2nd claim is dubious, I read that it was credited to Rechenberger, but he died on 26th of april. I seems probable that this is mixed up with Rechenbergers claim on 26th of april.
By the way it was Lt. R. Schmitts claim which also was claimed by a nearby 2cm Vierlingsflak.

The handling of this plane in IL2 is not simulated as one might wish, but it´s ok.
According to testpilots, the He-162 had a faster roll rate than anything in the skies (including Fw-190), british pilots confirmed this later (as did the one US flight, who refers that onlyx the X-1 came close to the He-162´s roll rate at high speeds). The longitudinal stiffness was ok, the rudder effectifeness excellent but the plane suffered from some horizontal instability, esspeccially during the prototype phase. It also had a very light stick with unreasonably light rudder forces at 620 mp/h. All in all highly agil but not a beginners plane.